"MADAM," her husband wrote, "I have heard the whole disgraceful story of the year you were supposed to have been absent in Europe from the lips of Leon Vinton and his housekeeper. I need not ask you if he told the truth. Your looks when you met him to-day were sufficient corroboration of his story. No wonder you looked so ghastly at the reappearance of the man you thought you had murdered. Oh, God! to think of it. You whom I have loved so madly, whom I thought so true and pure--you, a sinner, with a soul as black and unrepentant as a fiend in Hades! "To-morrow I shall institute proceedings for a divorce. I can no longer lend the shelter of my name to one who has so basely deceived and betrayed me!" CHAPTER XXXVIII. The letter dropped from Queenie's shaking hand, and she fell heavily into a seat, her slender form trembling with great, tearless emotion. "Oh, God!" she moaned, "it is indeed a bitter cup that is pressed to my lips! A disowned daughter and sister, and a divorced wife!" "What does he say, Queenie?" inquired her uncle, pausing in his weary march up and down the room. She silently pointed to the letter that lay upon the carpet, where it had fallen from her hands. He picked it up and read it, then turned his kindly blue eyes upon her with an expression of pity and distress. "The scoundrel Vinton must indeed have traduced and maligned you to have elicited such a scathing letter from your devoted husband. Let me go and bring Lawrence to you, Queenie, that you may vindicate yourself." But she shook her head sorrowfully yet firmly. "No Uncle Rob; he asks for no defense from me; he tacitly accepts all that Vinton has told him as the truth. He will hear nothing from you or me. There is nothing left me but to hide myself somewhere in the great cruel world and die," she said, with inexpressible bitterness. "Queenie, let me entreat you not to throw away your happiness thus. Let me explain everything to Lawrence as you have told it to me. He could not be hard upon you then. He would see how cruelly you had been wronged, and how much you had suffered for it. If he loves you as much as he has seemed to do he could not but forgive you." She took the letter from his hand and glanced over its brief contents again. "No, no, his love must have been dead indeed before he could write to me so cruelly as this. Let him think what he will, Uncle Rob. The best is bad enough; so why should I try to vindicate myself? He shall have his freedom since he wants it so much."